'As a game ... it's surprisingly swift and exciting, with the hectic, minute-to-minute battling and health management beats of Left 4 Dead, and a real sense of the old-school RPG as you keep neat lists of the things you've collected and maybe draw a map as you go. It's not an easy game if you're going to successfully stop Gingrich Yurr from triggering the apocalypse, but it's filled with clever elements: keys, pas scodes and phone numbers that unlock specific paragraphs, cameos that include Charlie Higson and Tom Watson (he was dead when I found him, honest), references to Lara Croft and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, and eleventh-hour jokes about valley girls and Pokemon. The text is smart and quietly witty, the choices still make you weigh up your options (and cheat, of course) and the wonderful art, by Kevin Crossley and Greg Staples, hits just the right notes, invoking the lurid horror of old video nasty covers.' 9/10, Eurogamer

Ian Livingstone OBE is, with Steve Jackson, the originator of the Fighting Fantasy series. Since Fighting Fantasy's huge success, he has become a major figure in world of computer games, and is now Life President of Eidos, the name behind Tomb Raider.